Bong Joon-ho’s latest flick “The Host” really impressed NYT film critic Manohla Dargis, who called it the best film she’s seen so far at Cannes:
Another offering from South Korea — and the best film I’ve seen to date at this year’s festival — is “The Host,” which for some reason is screening outside the main festival program in a parallel section called the Directors’ Fortnight. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, who made the policier “Memories of Murder,” this terrific hybrid-genre fantasy about a mutant creature with a lotuslike mouth and a steady appetite has been alternately described as a monster movie and a science fiction thriller, but is also a comedy, a family drama, a political critique and, at times, a seriously scary freak-out. Mr. Bong can shift moods and tones on a dime, and when the loudly appreciative audience wasn’t laughing at the witty dialogue it was shrieking at tensely wound scenes as effective as any in Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds.”
Bong Joon-ho is the director of “Memories of Murder,” which I’m told is excellent. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see it.
Dargis apparently liked Yoon Jong-bin’s “The Unforgiven,” too.
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And the American distributor Magnolia just bought the US rights to the film, so your readers in the West should be able to see THE HOST in the theaters before the end of the year.
Variety review is here:
http://www.variety.com/index.a.....6&cs=1
I give “Memories of Murder” a thumbs up. It was good enough to burn a DVD copy of it. (Not that I did.)
Oh crap…I have a Netflix copy of Memories of Murder in my drawer that I still haven’t watched yet. I haven’t been in a really movie watching mood lately… I need to get around to watching that.
from the Variety article:
Prologue, set six years ago at the U.S. Army Base in Yonsan, Seoul, has a South Korean flunky ordered by his Yank boss (Scott Wilson) to empty gallons of aging formaldehyde into the sink — and therefore straight into the Han River, which flows through the capital.
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The government claims the creature is host to a horrifying, unknown virus and fumigates the area. Following the death of a Yank soldier, the U.S. military decides on “direct intervention” by using a secret chemical weapon, Agent Yellow.
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classic stuff.
Marmot, “Memories of Murder” is a great movie, definitely watch it–better than “Old Boy,” for me anyway.
“The Host” plot sounds unfortunately like typical Korean projection of being afflicted by Americans…damn the U.S. and its “direct intervention”!
They always have to blame the U.S….not like Koreans themselves have not polluted the crap out of the Han River with far more than six gallons of formaldehyde. Always have to play the victim card. You’d think even they would get tired of it once in awhile. Grow the f*ck up.
Imagine an honest Korean movie about those “direct interventions” by the U.S. in 1945 and 1950–I can’t.
But you still shouldn’t piss in your hosts’ pool, even if you’ve helped him saving his damn whole household from northern fire. If your host does pollute his own main river, you don’t have to follow his bad example. Got it? Grow the f*ck up, lil’ putin.
Hey Shin, the incident was resolved and blame accepted. Why make it the basis of a major film?
Do you think Koreans living in other countries, running factories and the like, respect the laws and citizens of their “hosts”? Maybe you all need to grow the f*ck up, lil’ hypocrite kyopo.
We have 2 million Koreans like you and nulji pissing in our pool. I’m sick of it.
Let’s play nice.
Sorry, Robert.
Think about why director Bong would dredge up the six gallons of formaldehyde incident to put in what by all accounts is not an exploitation picture, but is meant to be an award-winning major film.
What is his agenda?
I maintain it can only be to keep stirred up in the Korean public (as if it needed more stirring) an anti-American feeling. Whether he is one of the screen quota freaks or just another Korean man who is feeling threatened, I claim it is irresponsible. People like “Sugar Shin” likely agree with that agenda and so have no interest in seeing it exposed.
Maybe next a Mexican director will make a film about a creature spawned by pollution from a Korean-owned maquiladora or a film maker from the Solomon Islands will make a movie about Korean fishermen raping 12-year-old local girls. I’d say that’s some serious pool-pissing.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for a Korean director to do it, though.
Lil’ putin, I’ve observed your comments here and you take any and every opportunity to scribble your disgust about Koreans or Kyopos with broad biased strokes of the brush. Anything negative a Korean does, is your lynchpin to get it back at ALL Koreans. How brainlessly undifferenitated is that? I wasn’t commenting the movie or its storyline, but only your pathetic attitude.
Do you think Koreans living in other countries, running factories and the like, respect the laws and citizens of their “hosts”? Are all US companies playing by the environment ruels of their host countries? Dunno. But private business enterprises don’t belong to state-led armed forces stationed in an allied country. Can you see the difference? No? Yes, them damn gooks are all the same for you, huh. Look like and think the same, huh, cause they have no clue about whitey’s great concept of individualism, huh, ya know…
We have 2 million Koreans like you and nulji pissing in our pool. I’m sick of it.
You don’t have to tell that you’re sick. It’s obvious that you’re infested with a “Hate-them-Kyopos”-Virus.
And by the way, no, I’m not living in da United States. Relieved now? Go fuck yourself.
ok, I can’t resist this one…I know the topic is “The Host” but all the hooha with the formaldehyde is too much to pass up.
I took two North Korean bodies (flood ing vicitms who wahsed downriver) to the mortuary in July of 2000 where I heard about the formaldehyde issue for the first time. Albert Macfarland, the US Official in question, who was later convicted in absentia by a Seoul court, was not even in country at the time of the incident. One of his underlings, a certain Mr. Kim, whose name I have yet to see in a Korean newspaper article ordered heard that Macfarland was going to cut him loose in a personnel trimming op and decided to get back. Macfarland had left orders to “dispose” of the formaldehyde. There is a proper method for doing this…. and so, Mr. Kim orders the privates working at the mortuary to empty it down the drain and takes pictures of them doing it then sends them to Green Korea United. Has anybody ever asked what proof there was of the incident?? The proof is in the pictures and the pictures were taken by the guilty party. In the media’s quest for blood and orgasmic convulsion any time a USFK incident pops up MAcfarland has been assumed guilty without trial.
U wanna know why USFK shouldn’t transfer SOFA authority of criminal jurisdiction of troops to the South Korean authorities? Because the Seoul court convicted Macfarland even though they knew he wasn’t responsible for the incident. That’s insidious. The day USFK gives jurisdiction of troops over to a foreign country when the US government is the reason why troops are there to begin with is the day the Silver Surfer comes ridin through as the herald announcing the coming doom cause I’m gonna go fuckin ballistic.